Joy of Six: Joanna Lumley's TV career

Disclaimer: the following article will momentarily disappoint two sets of fans. Firstly because we're going chronological today. Sorry, rankings fans. And although the Joy in this Six is all about Joanna Lumley, whose status as a national institution was founded on her role as Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, we're not going to talk about Ab Fab. Apologies, Ab Fab fans. But let's be honest here: what hasn't been said before? In a blatant and probably rather sad attempt to appease the Ab-Fabbers among you, here's one of my favourite moments to keep you going.

Anyway, on to six other equally joyous milestones in Lumley's TV career:

1) Coronation Street 1973

Lumley's eight-episode stint as Ken Barlow's squeeze in Coronation Street cemented her place as the era's foremost purveyor of pretty-girlfriend roles. It all began in George Lazenby's one-off outing as Bond, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, when she featured as one of Blofeld's 12 walking pouts. Having delivered her single line – "I know what he's allergic to" – with just the right blend of innuendo and breeding, it wasn't long before she found herself portraying saucy posh birds for a living. After playing the mandatory sexy one in 1971's formulaic flat-share sitcom It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling, during which the wardrobe department often couldn't stretch to more than her underwear, Lumley sprung up in The Persuaders, Are You Being Served? and as Harold's ludicrously well-to-do girlfriend, Bunty Kennington-Stroud, in Steptoe & Son before landing the part of headmaster's daughter Elaine Perkins in Corrie. Elaine was the classic - *cough* slightly unoriginal *cough* - sophisticate to Ken's frustrated northerner, introducing the smitten school-teacher to cravats (what?!) and sherry (gasp!) in the time-honoured tradition of cultural exchange between beautiful young women and gullible older men. Indeed, such was the outlandishness of Elaine's sherry-sipping habits, she was never allowed to step foot in the Rovers for fear of upsetting the regulars. All signs, to the likes of you and I, that the relationship was doomed to failure. But that didn't stop committed marriage fan Ken popping the question after a mere four screen hours – during which time not a single kiss was exchanged; that's how posh she was. She said no.

2) The New Avengers, 1976-1977

The New Avengers. Photograph: PA

Although Corrie has often been a springboard to bigger and better things – think Casualty, think Wife Swap, think Resident Evil: Extinction! – Lumley found herself out of work for the rest of 1973. She had to rely on bit parts in General Hospital and The Cuckoo Waltz - though they were challenging, gritt… - oh all right, she was a Pretty Young Flopsy in both - for the next couple of years. Handily, however, the producer who put together this criminally-dubbed Laurent Perrier advert in 1975 got so excited, he decided to revive The Avengers, and fellow producer Brian Clemens rather liked the cut of Lumley's jib. And they liked her second screen test so much they stuck it in the credits (at about 33 seconds, and check out the wah-wah guitar throughout), despite the fact that she had long since lost the brown mullet, during a visit to John Frieda that sparked arguably the first and finest TV-hair craze.

The New Avengers was much like the old, ie the - now three - main characters found themselves in variously barking situations with only their wits, bowler hats and high-kicks to save them. Oh, and hand guns – see Lumley in full gun-toting mode here. Face transplants, killer birds, giant rats, brain-washing masseuses and, of course, homicidal buildings … they're all there. Some kind soul with a little too much time on their hands has put together this collection of Lumley's fight scenes. But personal Purdey picks would be her pyjama-clad detective work in Sleeper and the schmaltzy ending to Obsession. This not only brings together Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins pre-Professionals, but features Purdey in a heart-wrenching face-off with former-boyfriend-turned-villain Larry Doomer (Shaw, about 2 minutes 40 seconds in). The music's straight out of Gone with the Wind. So's the intonation for that matter – "God help me, I don't know" – who thought that was a good idea? But you'll blub like a defeated X Factor contestant anyway.

3) Sapphire and Steel, 1979-1982

"All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned." If you ever watched this brilliant excuse to up ATV's special effects budget - to about 72p - you'll now be heartily singing "Doooooooo doo doo doo do-do-do-dooo-doodle-ooh, doodle-ooh…". If you didn't, you'll be mentally filing this one under WTF?

Sapphire and Steel Public domain

Sapphire and Steel - Lumley and the lovely David McCallum, who sweetly sported a Purdey cut during most of this series - helped fight crimes against Time in six assignments that took, collectively, 34 episodes to solve. Apparently, there are all sorts of undesirables lurking in the corridor of Time, just waiting for a weakness that will allow them through into Other Times, where they can wreak havoc, like getting a cupboard full of umbrellas to attack Sapphire (1m57s), or getting Sapphire to go at Steel with, er… a posy of flowers (about 4 minutes 30 seconds in). The pair could speak telepathically and while Steel was, as you might have guessed, very strong, Sapphire was the intuitive one who could mess around with Time and other people's heads; you could tell when she was doing this because her eyes would shine blue (1 minutes 7 seconds in). Despite this slightly shaky premise and a special effects department that appears, in hindsight, to have been staffed by Blue Peter rejects, the series bagged almost a quarter of the viewing public in its heyday and could, without too much of a smirk, be described as a precursor to The X Files. Sadly, ATV succumbed to Central in 1981 and a shift in programming saw Sapphire and Steel trapped in a petrol station in space for all eternity. I'm honestly not making this up.

4) Class Act, 1994

Put your hand up if you actually watched this 1990s venture. Apparently about 10 million of us did at its peak, but it's probably still one of Lumley's least recognised TV outings because it coincided with Ab Fab. Which we're still not talking about, except to say that her performances as grotesque old slag Patsy Stone catapulted Lumley into Official Superstardom, and once Ab Fab, which we are definitely not talking about was the nation's favourite show, a couple of TV types decided that the capers of Kate Swift, a misanthropic aristocrat imprisoned thanks to the dodgy dealings of her now murdered husband, were made for Lumley.

Kate gets sent down because scuzzy journalist Jack - John Bowe - tells the court things proper journalists aren't supposed to reveal, which also gets him the sack. After serving six months in prison, Kate and new pal, Aussie burglar Gloria - Nadine Garner - reclaim the Swift home and team up, rather improbably, with Jack, to work out what the heck happened to the Swift fortune. It's all faintly ridiculous stuff but at least proves that the comic skills she demonstrates in that programme we're absolutely not talking about aren't a fluke – her summary of her lot in episode two (about 2 minutes in) is beautifully delivered. And the fact that she spits out "Australian" with greater disdain than she does "drunk" is a nice touch. The punch she gives Jack in the first episode makes for a great exchange that sets the tone for their relationship (start at about one minute thirty, but give it a good few minutes to unfold – at least to get the obsequious little turd). But my favourite comedy moment was her high-wire attempt to talk her cousin's fiancé out of ending it all by leaping off the top of Battersea power station. If anyone can track down footage of this online, do tell.

5) Girl Friday, 1994 and other travel outings

The other thing that the series we've all agreed is not going to crowbar its way into this gave Lumley was the opportunity to see various exciting bits of the world, starting with the trip shown in documentary Girl Friday. These days, celebrities won't go near nature without perimeter fencing, large cheques and the promise of a lucrative contract promoting Iceland at the end of it, but in 1994 Lumley agreed to spend nine days on a tiny desert island near Madagascar with a hands-off camera crew by day and a camcorder by night. It could have been dreadful in the wrong hands – the opportunity for self-indulgence might have given the BBC a Feltz-esque celebrity meltdown years ahead of the curve – but Lumley's stuff-and-nonsense approach made this a highly watchable documentary. Highlights included accidentally walking, naked, into full view of the crew boat - making those onboard the envy of middle-aged men everywhere, alas there's no footage to link to. Then there's digging for sweet potatoes - "I've seen them in Sainsbury's" - and the famous 36A shoes.

Proving such an affable orator in these sorts of circumstances, a few years later she travelled across Bhutan in the footsteps of her grandparents, in 2002 the Beeb followed her work with giraffes for the Born Free foundation - she even got a kiss from one of them - and in September we saw Lumley travel up through Norway in search of the Northern Lights. Perhaps an attempt at Everest next?

6) Sensitive Skin 2005

Up In Town. Photograph: BBC

After spending the 1990s playing women in denial about their advancing years, the noughties have given us the grown up Joanna Lumley. That's not to say she's lost her sense of humour; her more recent finest moments have made good use of her comic pedigree even if in rather darker ways. It wouldn't do not to mention 2002's Up In Town, a series of six monologues delivered as the aging divorcee Madison Blakelock. It received the kind of underwhelming scheduling usually reserved for the last series of a sitcom that's outstayed its welcome but was actually worth so much more. The whole series only takes an hour to watch but if you're so busy you don't even have that to spare, at least watch Rats, which is laugh-out-loud funny - "Communism at its absolute best!" - and a little bit sad, all at once.

Sensitive Skin. Photograph: Baby Cow/BBC

It's a mood that is continued in Sensitive Skin, which debuted in 2005 and returned for a second series last year. Lumley plays Davina Jackson, a 60-year-old starting to question the sense of her life and her relationships with husband Al - Denis Lawson - and son Orlando - James Lance, who realises thirty-something childhood with a compelling lack of grace. There are still plenty of opportunities for laughs, most notably when Davina attempts a cupboard clinch with toyboy Greg, who kills the mood somewhat by accidentally revealing his Oedipal fantasies. "Either you think of me as a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus, or you in fact think that I'm your mother," she deadpans. "And you know, either way, that's just not good." But it's the show's greys that make it, the fug of existential disenchantment that hangs over the Jackson household. There's as much silence as there is speech and the music wouldn't be out of place over a montage of someone's recently ended life. Would it be an overstatement to describe this as an example of 21st century British TV at its best? Probably. But it was bloody good.